Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (Video Game Review)

If you fondly remember sitting around your standard definition television while kickflipping your way through the highest combos possible in the original Tony Hawk games, you might as well go ahead and pick up Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD. The new version of the game acts as a greatest hits version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 with an enhanced graphical presentation and online capabilities. You and your friends might have grown up and moved on in your lives, but the classic game remains as enjoyable as ever, and playing a multiplayer session is as simple as joining or creating a match online, as you trashtalk your buddies on the way to yet another victory.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD contains 7 classic stages, 5 returning skaters and 7 original songs including Powerman 5000's When World's Collide from the original Tony Hawk titles. What this means is you'll instantly begin experiencing flashbacks to your younger days and the sense of enjoyment you could receive from a skateboarding title long before the first-person shooter genre became the unstoppable force it is today. Single player returns with Single Session, Free Skate and Career modes. The single player campaign has remained mostly untouched with minor changes made to stages and a near identical statistical progression system for each of the game's skaters.

Small changes can be seen everywhere you look in the game such as the ability to find items on in-game maps on the pause screen, quick restarts or the ability to post your high scores directly to Facebook. Where Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD makes great leaps and bounds over the games of old is in online play. There are a variety of game modes here that will allow you to test your skills in something as simple as Trick Attack or interesting modes like Big Head Elimination with up to three other players. You can even take your Xbox LIVE avatar into matches to use against your online opponents, and of course, the game comes packed with online leaderboards so you can compare your skills with the world.

The game features enhanced high definition graphics as its name suggests, but you'll hardly notice the difference in your skater so much as the great lighting and textures of the revitalized stages. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD allows you to unlock Projectives after completing each stage's designed challenges to give great replay value. Nearly everything in the game must be unlocked really, but luckily you'll have plenty of classic songs and 7 new jams that fit in well with the classic soundtrack. This is the game you remember and love only now it's better than ever before.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is all about performing tricks in succession to earn as many points as possible during the game's time limit. If you're into this type of game, you'll easily find Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD to be one of the best the genre has offered up in several years, but it's not for everyone. The game presents the best stages taken from old games which allows old fans a chance to go down memory lane with a great new presentation and first timers to discover these long forgotten games like so many before them. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD isn't always a smooth ride, but the game exudes so much fun and good vibes making it a hard title to pass up. Check it out today and dream of landing the perfect 900 tonight!

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is now available exclusively for Xbox LIVE Arcade and can be purchased for 1200 Microsoft Points. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is rated T by the ESRB for Blood & Violence. For more information on the game, check out the official Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD Facebook page.